How not to present science

A few weeks ago I was part of a crack team of science presenters (James Piercy, Debbie Syrop and Matt Pritchard) presenting a session at the Science Communication Conference, How not to present science. It consisted of our favourite pet hates, brought to life, and a number of people have asked for notes on the session. I thought I’d provide my ‘script’ on one section, titled The World Cringing Championships.

The premise had my co-presenters on a sofa with ‘buzzers’ commenting on my cringeworthy performance, whilst I attempted to break every ‘rule’ in the science communicators’ handbook. This was very peculiar to put together, as I was deliberately trying to insert comments and foibles that I’ve spent over a decade deliberately minimising, or intentionally inserting comments that don’t come naturally. It was joyfully liberating, however, to know that whatever went wrong on stage I could assert was my intention all along.

In a statistical survey, 73% of Daily Mail readers, said the most important dinosaur was the Tyrannosaurus rex, but I don’t want to talk to you about the T. rex I want to talk about my favourite dinosaur which is the Parasaurolophus.

Anyway, Dinosaur scientists worked with other special scientists who did CT scans of the skulls and found that inside there were tubes and passages and hollows. Other scientists thought that maybe these passages were used like a nose trumpet to make noises.

So, Parasaurolophus was a herbivore, as I mentioned earlier. Just like a cow. And we all know that cows produce a lot of methane gas. Well, imagine if, instead of coming out one way, the gas came out the other. Now, imagine that the crest is full of methane gas. That could be really dangerous if there was a lightning strike nearby.

Of course, we’ve all been guilty of one or another of these no-nos, sometimes they have even turned out to be the funniest bits. But we should also hold ourselves to higher standards. Consideration and preparation are key in maintaining high production values, which is what science communicators should strive towards, isn’t it?

Clearly, there are very many comments of significant cringeworthiness in this post, so many that I lost patience in highlighting them all. How many did you find?

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10 thoughts on “How not to present science”

Well done, that’s probably the most cringeworthy script I have ever seen. So much so I nearly gave up half way through.

I’m also ashamed to say that I have actually done a couple of those things before, although they were all early in my career (of just 20 months so far) and I quickly recognised them and put a stop to them, I hope.

I suppose the most basic error is to not be prepared, not have all your equipment checked, brought, and laid out in order so they are all there when you need them. I don’t think you can ever 100% guarantee that you’ll never forget something, or that something will fail on stage. In that case, some quick thinking is in order. It’s happened to me a couple of times but I think I recovered well.

The main lesson from the above script is, I think, don’t try to be funny if it doesn’t come naturally to you. I never try to be funny, it seldom works for me. Sometimes, through happy chance, something funny does pop out of my mouth. I just savour those moments for what they are and hope it happens again. But forcing humour never works for me.

Thanks for sharing the content of your conference session – I wasn’t able to make it to the conference, but it’s useful to be able to get a glimpse of what went on.

I think the idea of doing everything obviously wrong on purpose is a useful tool for teaching demonstration technique.

There are certainly a few more points worth highlighting in your example:

* Depending on the type of fire to light, I probably wouldn’t take someone else’s lighter. You never know who might hand you something quite unsafe that doesn’t fit with your risk assessment.
* I don’t know how you played it during the session, but there are also important points to be made about delivery of the script. Volume, speed, intonation are all easy to get wrong. Were you “A bit too extrovert” all the way through?!

Thanks Alex,
With reference to the lighter, I had asked Matt to bring one with him and we tested it before the session. In this instance, there was no risk of the bubbles igniting, so we were all OK on that count.
During the session, my intention was to get volume, speed and intonation all wrong in different places. This is more difficult to portray in the script, but you’re absolutely right in spotting it.
I’m glad the session notes are useful for those that couldn’t make it to the conference.

This is a fantastic piece. It was one of the highlights of the Communication conference.
It was easy to laugh and we can see each point that Elin made but it is incredibly useful. I’m sure we are all guilty of doing such things though hopefully not to the same extremes.

Incorrect use of volunteers is a big annoyance for me. I have seen great presenters do brilliant shows but there will be one or two members of the audience who have been sacrificed on the alter along the way.

The more experience I get the more I am able to keep an inner monologue running, assessing myself and the audience throughout. The day we stop trying to improve what we do or learning from others we may as well give up.

Thanks for your comments, especially Jamie who had to suffer the indignity of being abandoned on stage.

One of the difficulties in highlighting these mistakes is presenting the myth that I never fall into the trap of making them myself. I can promise you that even after (well) over a decade of presenting I still make many. My hope in highlighting them is that we learn to recognise them and try to hold ourselves to higher standards next time.

If the lack of coherent scientific content stood out as being inferior or missing, then it probably worked.
After all, on this occasion, the main learning objective was presentation technique (or an appreciation of the lack of it as demonstrated).
It was to a hall full of adults in the field of science communication, the traditional ‘scientific knowledge’ could have been anything, as long as it was dreadfully presented.